http://www.digitalcameraworld.com MARCH 2020 DIGITAL CAMERA^135
Josef Koudelka
Above: Crusader map
mural, Kalia Junction,
Dead Sea area.Gilles Peress, Stephen Shore and Nick Waplington.
Koudelka was the first photographer from the group
who came to Israel, and Baram was the first student
to be picked out from his year as a photographer’s
assistant. Baram reveals: “We were just kind of thrown
together. We had no clue what it was going to be like.”
Over a period of four years, and seven separate
shoots, Koudelka and Baram bonded. What started
out as a stills-only project developed into Baram
filming Koudelka’s movements and modus operandi
on a day-to-day basis, which slowly saw a strong
mutual trust building up between them.
“Getting to know each other was a very long
process,” says Baram. “He [Koudelka] is not an
easy guy. I think he was very suspicious towards
this project in Israel. It was a very long time before
he signed a contract offered to him. He’s extremely
cautious with things he takes on. The most important
thing for Josef is not to be manipulated and not
having his work manipulated.”
The result of the filming is the 2019 revised cut
of the documentary Koudelka: Shooting Holy Land,
which shows Koudelka working in East Jerusalem,
Hebron, Ramallah and Bethlehem, as well as various
Israeli settlements along the wall that separates Israel
and Palestine. Koudelka’s photographic work in the
Holy Land – primarily shot on a Fujifilm 6x17cm
panoramic camera – is also showcased in the book
Wall, first published by Aperture in 2013. Thanks to
Gliad Baram, Digital Camera has been given access
to exclusive interviews with the normally media-shy
Koudelka, excerpts of which are published here...Why did you decide to go to Israel?
I didn’t want to go there originally, so why did I
accept the invitation? I discovered the wall. I think
I just do what relates to me. And that wall related
to me because all of us in Czechoslovakia wanted
to get to the other side of the wall. And they told
us all kinds of things but, mainly, they didn’t tell
us the truth. Another thing was that the landscape
in Israel is just fantastic; it’s so beautiful.
When I saw the wall, I felt very sad about it because
I thought to myself how these people have been
ruining a lovely landscape that is holy for a great
number of people on this earth. Of course, you
can always justify anything.
What I say about that wall is that it’s a crime against
the landscape. In the same way as there is crime
against humanity, there can also be crime against
landscape. When you build a different landscape,
a new landscape, you must foresee that the
landscape is going to stay there. I’ve already
seen other places where that wall had to be